Daily LInks
1. China’s members-only retailers flourish, despite growing pressure on bricks-and-mortar stores: Membership-only bulk retailers are growing in popularity in China’s big cities, catering to an increasingly wealthy and selective consumer population, but it is unclear whether the model has large-scale appeal due to its relatively high price points and increasing competition from e-commerce stores. – Read More on SCMP
2. Bonanza for Big Luxury Brands Points to Small, Private Casualties: Certain smaller listed brands are holding their own. Moncler has already exceeded its pre-Covid size. Burberry has too, although just barely. And Prada’s Hong Kong-listed shares shot up 12% after it released numbers showing first-half retail sales 8% ahead of pre-pandemic levels. But they are exceptions. – Read More on the WSJ
3. Regenerative agriculture won’t solve the fashion industry’s pollution problems: The average consumer buys 68 garments per year, five times more than in 1980. Sourcing the raw materials for this ever-growing industry from regenerative farms would encompass a large-scale transformation. But just because a shirt is made from regeneratively grown cotton doesn’t make it a sustainable product. – Read More on GreenBiz
4. On a similar note … Fashion’s Tech Initiatives, Alone, Won’t Solve its Sustainability Issues. The industry as a whole has increasingly looked to volume to boost their earnings, particularly as mass-market margins have dropped. This has fueled a race to the bottom in both wages and quality, which is, of course, a critical part of fashion’s sustainability problem. – Read More on TFL
5. Shares in Bernard Arnault’s luxury goods conglomerate LVMH fell by 1.4% Friday, making Arnault $2.9 billion poorer as well, but he still finished the week with an estimated net worth of $192.9 billion, $500 million ahead of Bezos. – Read More on Forbes
6. ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ Installment Plans Are Having a Moment Again: Americans spent an estimated $20 billion to $25 billion using deferred payments in 2020, and transactions through such plans could grow 10 to 15 times by 2025, topping $1 trillion. – Read More on Bloomberg
